


seconds, seasons

by Stonestrewn



Series: Dinner Time [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 23:33:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3788452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What?” Skinner sputters, petals in her mouth and pollen in her nose. </p><p>“Flowers!” Dalish says, as if Skinner couldn’t tell. “Flowers, for you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	seconds, seasons

**Author's Note:**

> So [this picture ](http://serenity-fails.tumblr.com/post/116240829196/its-dinner-time) exists, and then there was talking about Skinner and Dalish and flowers on twitter, and the whole idea was so cute and great that I had to write it. And here we are.

“What?” Skinner says. Dalish’s smile doesn’t waver.

She’s standing too close, she always stands too close. Skinner has to tilt her head back to look her in the eyes, has to lean away and put her weight on her heels to keep any space between their bodies at all. There was a time when she would have fought for more, when this would have earned Dalish an elbow to the gut, a nasty bruise on her thigh, her hip. But then, she never used to do this, did she? Not until Skinner already knew what it felt like for there to be no space at all. She knows what Dalish’s bare skin feels like when she’s pressed up against it, she’s had her breath on her neck and her head on her shoulder. So Skinner’s arms stay at her sides, now, her hands make no fists. She just angles away a little, just so she can see Dalish’s face, that oddball goofy smile she’s wearing.

_“What?”_ Skinner says again, because Dalish is all quiet, stays all close with her hands behind her back and her eyes are half-lidded and soft and her lips are a chapped mess as always but they’re right there and Skinner’s own face is heating up, which, it doesn’t do that. Usually. She doesn’t blush, not like Dalish does, color of her cheeks going from a bowl of oats to bucket of raspberries in three seconds, slightest provocation. She just wasn’t prepared for this right now, is all.

It’s hard to be prepared for Dalish, increasingly hard, it’s like the longer Skinner knows her the more difficult it is not be caught off guard. By those lanky arms wrapping themselves around Skinner’s shoulder, by the kisses on her ear in the mornings. Dalish chews on her own hair when she’s concentrating on her ‘old elven tricks’, she hums out of tune when she cooks and talks in her sleep, and Skinner’s not prepared, she’s never prepared, it’s a backstab all the way in to her heart every time.  

If Dalish doesn’t tell her what’s up within the next few seconds Skinner’s going to shake it out of her or, the more probable option, just leave.  

She never needs to resort to either. Dalish’s smile widens, impossibly happy, and then she takes her hands from behind her back and shmooshes a whole bunch of flowers in Skinner’s face. “Here you go!”

“What?” Skinner sputters, petals in her mouth and pollen in her nose.

“Flowers!” Dalish says, as if Skinner couldn’t _tell_. “Flowers, for you.”

“There’s flowers fucking everywhere.” They’re standing in a meadow, grass up to their waists. Or, well. Skinner’s up to her waist. Dalish is, offensively, taller.   

“Yes, but these are for  _you_ .”

“Okay.” Skinner takes the bouquet, a little warily. It’s huge - she needs to hold on with both hands. “Why?”

“It’s been six months since we did it the first time.”

Skinner blinks. “You remember that?”

“Of course!”

“What, on the day? You can’t be sure.”

“Maybe not on the day. On the week, though, definitely.”

“I didn’t remember that.”

“Oh, I know,” Dalish says, all casually happy, like she never expected Skinner to and doesn’t care that she didn’t.   

Skinner dips her nose into the bouquet and breathes in the scent, like sugared sunshine. It’s a lovely gesture, she has to admit, obviously composed with some thought behind it. There’s sort of a pattern, larger flowers in the middle, smaller on the edges, then green shit all around them and some long, broad grass things stuck in here and there to sway above all the rest.  

“So you gave me _flowers_?” Skinner says, because it’s nice and all, but so not them. So not the thing she thought was them, anyway.

“Well, I asked Krem and-”

“Ugh.” She can just picture it. Krem grinning his best handsome asshole grin while Dalish asks him how to best celebrate having gotten laid half a year ago, like it was special. Like Skinner’s special, worth celebrating. She thinks about Krem and what an asshole he is, because then she doesn’t have to think about things stirring in her chest.

“I asked Krem,” Dalish goes on undeterred, “and he said ‘I don’t know’ so then I said maybe flowers, and he laughed and said ‘if you give Skinner flowers, she’ll eat them’.”

“Piece of _shit_.”

“I thought he was wrong about it.” Dalish sidles up beside her, puts her arm around Skinner’s shoulders. “Was it a bad idea? Are you mad?” she asks, as if she can’t tell from the angle of her ears that she’s not.

“No,” Skinner says anyway, because Dalish likes when she puts words on things, even when they’re obvious.

Dalish points at the flowers. “Forget-me-nots for remembrance, you probably guessed that one,” she says. “Marjoram leaves for happiness, violets for tenderness. Daisies - did you know their elven name means ‘the beauty of a thousand?’ They are there because they are pretty. Like you.”

“Shut up,” Skinner says. Her cheeks are heating up again.

Dalish giggles and pecks her on the earlobe. “Happy sex day!”

“You just said it wasn’t on the day.” Skinner looks up at her, squints. “Think we got time for one before the others get back?”

Turns out they have time for three. By the time the rest of the Chargers reach the meeting spot their clothes are back on and there are only a couple of leaves still in Dalish’s hair. Skinner clutches the bouquet while Dalish applies some definitely-not-magic to the stems to make sure they’ll last through the trip back to camp without wilting, and she glares at Rocky, Grim and Stitches in turn, daring them to say something. At Krem, she bares her teeth. He grins, but stays quiet, and the chief just goes: “Daisies? nice.” She can live with that.

\--

Skinner is going to die.

Her nose is running, her eyes so puffy she can barely see, her throat is itchy and it hurts to swallow. She has to breathe through her mouth if she wants any air at all, and the tent feels unbearably stuffy, like there’s not enough in there for her to properly fill her lungs.

Dalish props herself up on her elbow and gazes down at her with concern. “Let’s just throw the flowers out, please? This is a disaster.”

“They’re mine,” Skinner says, voice dull and flattened by snot. “You gave them to me, fuck off.”

“Well, I am taking them back!”

“Try it,” Skinner means to growl. It comes out as a gurgle.

They glare at each other for a few seconds - then Dalish snatches the bouquet from beside Skinner’s pillow and scrambles out of the tent in a flurry of scrawny limbs. Skinner’s right on her heel, bursting out into the moonlit summer night with a cough and a stumble. She would have stopped Dalish before she’d as much as thought about running out if she wasn’t all messed up like this, Skinner tells herself. She sniffles.

“Give them back,” she says, but Dalish shakes her head, and when Skinner lunges for them she holds them up over her head, out of reach.

“They are making you sick!”

“You know I could take you down if I wanted,” Skinner says.

“Go ahead, then,” Dalish bites back, and there’s just the faintest icy shimmer rippling through her fingers. She would never, just like Skinner wouldn’t ever, but the threat hangs in the air between them.

Until Dalish lowers her arm. All of her is drooping suddenly - shoulders, ears, spirit. “This is silly,” she says. “I only wanted to do something nice for you.”

“It was nice,” Skinner says. She steps up closer, reaches out to adjust Dalish’s tunic where the loose collar has slipped down her shoulder, and promptly sneezes all over her chest..

“Yuck!” Dalish squeaks, but she’s laughing, and Skinner’s laughing, too, though it sounds more like a coughing fit. “Let’s go sail these flowers down the creek,” Dalish says.

“I’ve told you, I respect your prancy moonlight rituals but I don’t want to do them.”

“Oh, it isn’t that.” Dalish sighs. “It is just me. And you. And pretty flowers being pretty in the water.”

 Skinner spits a gob of phlegm into the grass, peers up at Dalish, into her pale, open face. “Guess that works.”

The outside air helps some. The night is warm but not hot, and the breeze whispering through the trees is refreshing. The swelling in Skinner’s throat starts to go down, her eyes doesn’t itch as bad. She and Dalish walk silent through the trees - they’re both light on their feet, both good at disappearing into their surroundings, though Dalish has Skinner beat when they’re in the woods. Soon, the glimmer of water can be seen ahead. They speed up in unison.

The flowers do look pretty set adrift. Dalish untangles their stems one by one and gently lays each one down on the surface, holds them there for just a moment before giving it up to the languid flow of the creek. With the moonshine and the petals, it reminds Skinner a little of early summer in the alienage. The smells are all wrong, the sounds and the wind and the grass underfoot, but the glitter of silvery light, the white petals of the daisies drinking it up, it echoes. Her Vhenadal bore flowers. The petals would fill the air like like fragrant snow, cover the surface of every dirty puddle on the ground, and for a couple of days it would all be beautiful, despite peeling paint and stinking gutters. They’d all go out into it, into the first few truly warm nights of the year, and she wishes she knew the words to that old elven song Hahren sung, even if she wouldn’t understand them.

Dalish probably has much fancier memories. Probably has entire flowering forests to talk about if she wants, giant lakes and proud rivers, but Skinner has her one tree and her puddles and she wouldn’t trade them.  

She knows Dalish would never make her, would understand the ways a few petals wilting in the mud can be prettiness enough to last you months. That’s why she can sit with Dalish like this, sit calm and quiet watching poppies and cornflowers sail away and there is nothing in the moment that needs fighting.

Soon enough, the bouquet is gone. Dalish scatters the last, slightly crumpled marjoram leaves, and sighs.

“No more flowers,” she says.

“No more flowers for me,” Skinner agrees.

“I wonder which ones made you so sick?”

“Who cares.” Skinner stretches, fatigue slipping in where the swollen itchiness goes down.

“I do,” Dalish says. “I care. It would be useful to know. Perhaps, I could give you some other flowers, if I did.”

“I’m not gonna stick my nose into every weed we see from now on,” Skinner says, and if she sounds a little growly it’s only because she wouldn’t put it past Dalish to suggest exactly that.

Dalish huffs a laugh, and doesn’t press the issue. She’s raking her fingertip through the water, long flowing strokes, like she’s painting. Occasionally that ripple will flash through her fingers and the thinnest layer of ice will appear, leaving lines in her wake, delicate, frosty islands that last less than a minute before they’re swept away or melted.

It’s rare to see her like this. Doing her magic outside of battle, and doing it without constantly chatting to divert attention. Even with Skinner, even with the chief, she clings to the archery lie with a bullshit stubbornness you can’t help but admire, in a way. Skinner has stopped wondering about it, stopped poking at it. She lets Dalish be where and what she needs to, rests her eyes on her face, illuminated by the cold glow emanating from her fingers. It’s a pretty picture, peaceful, but there’s a sadness in the corners of Dalish’s mouth, the few lines on her face accentuated by the magic light.

Skinner thinks she’s glad she’s not a mage herself. Arrows won’t ever have that kind of ethereal beauty, but there’s no reason to look sad about them, either.

She lies down in the grass, closes her eyes. She has a dagger at her belt, a pouch of knockout powder on a string around her neck, and Dalish is a weapon all on her own. They’re not unarmed, never unarmed, and the Charger camp in the clearing is close, the woods are at peace. It’s fine to lie in the grass and let her ears be the only thing on guard. It’s fine, just for a little bit.

Dalish shifts beside her, Skinner hears the rustle of clothing. There’s a small, brittle sound - the shattering of thin ice, Skinner realizes - and then in a minute there is is again, and then again.

“What are you doing?” Skinner asks, eyes still closed. There was a time when she would have sat up to investigate, but she has put her life in Dalish’s hand a hundred times by now and she has always carried her safely. There can come no harm from Dalish’s touch.

“Nothing,” comes the reply, high and sing-song, her lying voice. There’s never harm with Dalish but there’s also never nothing. Yet Skinner lets her be, lets her play with her ice-crackle sounds if that’s what makes her happy.

After a few minutes, when Skinner has just allowed herself to relax as much as she ever does, Dalish nudges her leg.

“I have something for you,” she says.

“What is it,” Skinner says, stifling a yawn. They really should be getting back, she really shouldn’t be getting this comfortable.

“Look.”

Skinner props herself up on her elbows, opens her eyes.

There’s a flower in Dalish’s hand. Made entirely out of ice, a glittering thing, it catches the moonlight and holds it. The shape of a waterlily, but each petal is like a web, only the veins of the leaf, a frail and frozen net that’s impossibly delicate in the way the threads weave together, creating the most intricate patterns and curving gently together. It’s a gorgeous thing, gorgeous and unimaginable. Skinner could never have thought of seeing anything like it until now.

“This one won’t make you sneeze,” Dalish says. “Take it!”

Skinner doesn’t move. “It’s gonna melt.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah.” Skinner swallows. “It does.”

“Oh, Skinner.” Dalish sighs, smiling. “I’ll just make you another. And another. I could turn all the water in this creek into flowers if you want me to, I know the trick.” She clears her throat and adds: “It’s old and elven and you wouldn’t understand if I explained, but I could do it.”

She leans forward, holds out the flower and more or less drops it at her, and Skinner scrambles to sit up and catch it, because the thought of it shattering is unbearable.

As soon as it’s out of Dalish’s cold hands, as soon as it’s in Skinner’s, the flower begins to melt. It drips away between her fingers, thread-thin rivulets over her skin. It deforms and disappears, little by little, crisp, pointed shapes becoming rounded and indistinct, and even then it’s beautiful. It’s like the Vhenadal, somehow, it’s like knowing the beauty is going to pass but being sure of its return, of the shortness of seconds and the forever of seasons.

She’s going to remember this, Skinner thinks. She’s going to remember the shape of this flower, carve it into her mind. All of it, every detail, and she’s going to get her knife and carve it into wood, she’s going to fill her pockets with coin and pay someone else to engrave the image into silverite, something that can survive them all. This, the unlasting thing, will be forever. She’s going to make it so.

It doesn’t take long before the flower has melted completely. All that remains is the freezing ache in Skinner’s fingers, the dark water stains on her pants. She wipes herself off on the grass, decides not to care about the unpleasant feeling of damp fabric.

“Come here,” she says to Dalish, and Dalish comes, snuggles up against her side.

Morning won’t come in a good while yet. Neither of them is supposed to be on watch tonight, they can let this extend for a bit longer - the moonlit creek, the summer wind, their bodies entwined.

“Skinner,” Dalish whispers. “I must tell you something.”

“What?”

“I have never seen a booger as truly gigantic as this one in your nose right now.”

Skinner punches her tenderly in the arm.  

 

 


End file.
